This week’s Sunday Poem is the second in a nine-part narrative series — the Buddhist Chronicles. (If you missed the first poem in the sequence, you can read it here.)

I’ve long been fascinated by the story of Siddhartha, of his life as a man before he became the Buddha, the Enlightened One.

These poems began with a question: How do each of the people in this story bear the costs of one man’s search for enlightenment?

And that led to a more universal question: What are the costs of a paradigm that separates the material world from its soul or essence? How do we experience the pain of this separation in our own lives? How does the earth pay the price for this fragmentation?

And then, further: What is the Great Pattern that holds both fragmentation and wholeness in Love?

As always, I’d love to hear your comments about your own experiences with this issue. How does it play out in your life?

And yes, it’s Poetry Sunday, so please share your poems! Poetry enriches all of us.

Buddhist Chronicles

2
Rejection

Don’t preach to me, Siddhartha. You are an old man
who masquerades in a young man’s clothes.
Don’t talk to me of afterlife; I know what I know.
My body is my guide. Beat of pulse, belly’s cry,
the raging of my thighs tell me all I need to know.
Your heavenly consolations are not for me.

Go to your hermit’s cave, Siddhartha. Reject
the body’s truths of blood and bone
for arid philosophical perfection.
Sultry night and all the burning stars will
bed with me when you are gone.